Page 73 of Under Control

“You can’t leave,” he choked out as she walked away, then sealed his mouth. He couldn’t fucking talk anymore.

She snapped around, turning to look at him over her shoulder.

“I’m falling for you, Carrick—and I’ve realized that there’s one person you can’t protect me from,” she said as big tears rolled down her cheeks, “and that’syou.”

Then she turned back to the door and walked out.

And he made a bizarre noise that he’d only heard himself make once before.

As he watched her disappear, he stopped feeling anything. He stopped hearing the ocean, the seagulls. He barely felt a drop fall onto his forearm as he looked down at his aching, bloody hands.

Reaching up to touch his face, he realized that his cheek was wet.

But it wasn’t from blood.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Carrick

Carrick stood in silence for minutes after she’d left—frozen in place.

A long-forgotten part of his mind was trapped, flipping back and forth between the cardboard box on the bed and Dani walking out of the door. Essential life support took over, turning up his survival instincts and turning off emotion. His body knew it had to survive because his mind…was justbreaking.

He found himself moving down the stairs, numb, looking from side to side for any detail he needed. What had happened when he was gone? How had they gotten to where they were?

His gaze moved from the chair to the couch—where he’d had some of the hottest sex of his life—the way her body curved underneath his, the way she took every inch of his swollen manhood and made him feel…

Before the thought could finish, Carrick drifted to the tequila bottle that still sat in the middle of the coffee table from the previous night. He moved toward it, picking it up, rotating it in his hands. He wanted to break shit.

He wanted to thunder.

And that was exactly why he’d found himself at Petrov’s office tower that morning in downtown LA, the place where Carrick had signed for the search and rescue job. Sure enough, Andriy—the CEO—had been there and Carrick had given him a piece of his mind. Carrick wasn’t a ‘sit back and take it’ kind of guy. He was a ‘determined, no bullshit’ one—and Andriy had gotten to know exactly what that meant.

Tilting his head back, he raised the tequila bottle and took three big gulps. It burned on the way down and tasted amazing. It reminded him of taking her mouth, tinged with tequila, and wrapping his tongue around hers. He hated reliving the memory right now, under the new circumstances of her departure. He hated it so much.

He whipped the bottle against the wall, watching it shatter into glass shards, leaving a lasting scar.

Fuck it.

He looked around his place—his perfectly decorated place, thanks to Aunt Kathy. He’d told her he’d pay her anything to set the place up because he didn’t want it to feel like his old house, his past…like Lauren.

He needed to forget.

Immediately, Delta was bolting upstairs, clearly having heard the shattering bottle. Carrick didn’t give a shit. He couldn’t give a shit about anything right then.

Not even his best friend.

“What the fuck happened?” Delta’s voice echoed behind him.

Carrick shot a fierce glare over at the shoreline, ignoring the question and the ball of fire inside his chest.

Delta didn’t relent as he approached. “What the fuck is going on with you? She stormed out?”

Carrick remained silent, as Delta’s feet crunched the glass.

He stopped in his tracks.

“What the fuck is this?” Delta roared, and finally Carrick turned to him. Delta’s gaze dropped to his bloody, scabbed knuckles. “Youdidn’t. Tell me you fucking didn’t.”

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